We’ve all seen the news lately and heard of lots of large and small businesses closing down. No doubt, you’ve also seen the impact on your high street with both large and smaller, independent retailers shutting up shop.

However, it’s important to realise that despite uncertainty in the economic environment, high levels of competition and increasingly value and price conscious customers, there is demand and opportunity out there for businesses that provide good value products and services combined with great customer service.

This is backed up by research from the Institute of Customer Service which states that:

• Two thirds of retailers consider ‘customer switching’ as a significant threat to their future sales whilst a third consider this customer behaviour as the biggest single threat to their business.
• However, three quarters of the businesses surveyed believe that the delivery of good customer service is an essential differentiator in the current economic environment.
• This is echoed by 83 percent of customers surveyed who said that the quality of service that they receive is very important to them when it comes to retaining their loyalty as a customer.

That doesn’t mean that you have to offer the lowest prices and the best service to succeed. It is important to point out that whilst customers are looking for competitive prices many are not willing to sacrifice service over price. I wrote about this on my blog a while ago where I talked about an article on mycustomer.com, where Right Now CEO Greg Gianforte quoted an interesting poll from Harris Interactive:

“According to their research, some 84% of customers would be prepared to pay 5% over the standard rate for a superior customer experience, 62% would pay 10% more, 25% would pay 15% more and 11% would pay 25% more.”

What I am not saying is that we all should put our prices up (although for some businesses that can be a great growth strategy). What I am saying is that when we develop our customer service we must understand what is right and best for our customers.

Customer service should not always be about making things fancy or delightful as that’s not what everyone wants and sometimes it’s just not appropriate. Sometimes customer service should about making things easy or familiar.

Why easy? Well, we are all busy so making something easy and quick and saving them time and hassle can be the best gift we can give to someone. Would you value that? I would.

What about familiarity? Where’s the value in that? As customers we are people too. So, why do we like familiarity? Because it’s understood. It feels less risky. Would you value that? I would.

In the end, for some businesses great customer service may only need to save us time and feel risk free, particularly with your existing customers (your most important asset).

When you are thinking about improving your customer service in your business are you over thinking and complicating it?

Over the festive break I spent quite a lot of time ‘unplugged’ from the digital world thinking about how we can help ourselves stand out in front of our customers and, at the same time, help ourselves build better relations with past and present customers.

Here’s a few ideas that I would encourage you to think about doing more of:

1. Automation, particularly marketing automation, is becoming really popular and there is a lot of talk about how we can automate this and that, specifically, when referring to online transactions, communication, customer service etc. Whilst I understand the rationale and efficiency of these type of efforts, I often stop and think about what this would mean to me if I were the customer on the receiving end of automation and how would it make me feel. Obviously, it will depend on the type of business you are in and the volume and size of transactions you have but do take the opportunity to stop and ask yourself what is the cost to your customer relations of trying to automate as much as you can. Try to resist the temptation to dehumanise everything. Put the time and effort in and do it yourself. In doing so, you will automatically personalise it and it will make you stand out.
2. If you want to make people feel good about your business, make it less about the business and more about them. Here’s a simple idea: Pick up the phone/meet more customers even just to say ‘Hi’. You never know what will happen.
3. We live in a digital age but don’t you get the feeling that you get a little overloaded from time to time with all the emails and web-based stuff that you see? How about winding back the clock a few years and try to do less by email and more by letter or postcard. We all love getting postcards and letters, right? Excited, I came across a great web-based service and set of applications for Android, iPhones and iPads called Touchnote that can help with that. What they do is allow you to upload pictures and images, write a personal message and they will post a postcard to a single or number of participants. Obviously, you have to pay for this service but what a great way to stay in touch with some of your customers and make you stand out at the same time.

What do you think? What would you add that has helped you stand out and build better relations with your customers?

In each of the reports, one trend/word/observation/conclusion….call it what you will has emerged. Many people many jump in and guess that it might be ‘unemployment’ or ‘parenting’ or ‘greed’ or ‘criminal’. However, you’d be wrong. The word that has come up in all of the reports is ‘courtesy’ and, particularly, the lack of it by police officers conducting stop and search in many of the areas where the riots took place. The reports suggest that this was a “significant factor in sparking the disturbances”.

Now, I am not condoning the riots. Not at all. The destruction and lawlessness that took place was completely wrong and all perpetrators should be punished.

But, the reports made me think about the breakdown of relationships between the police, youth and local communities and, particularly, how if you don’t start relationships off on the right foot then it’s all down there from there.

Being courteous doesn’t mean you have to agree with someone it just means that you are being polite. Here’s how I think it all links together in a chain:

Courtesy
leads to
Respect
which leads to
Real conversation
and
Trust
which helps
Relationships
to develop thus enabling
Actions
to be agreed and
Solutions
to be delivered

Take one of these links out of the chain and it collapses or we get something that is a lot less than what we want

Now, you may ask what has all of this got to do with small businesses and customers? Everything, I would say. This chain could applied to customer service, team management, leadership, employee engagement, police and community relations, parenting, schooling, marketing….everything.

Time to be more courteous to everyone?

The “Fix the Holes in My Bucket” Syndrome

A pet peeve of mine is when companies forget or mistreat their existing customers. It happens in a number of ways. Here are four quick ones:

1. Poor service
2. Always giving the best deals to new customers
3. Not doing what they say they will do
4. Changing the rules without telling their current customers

This got me to thinking: What if we lived in a world where all companies took care of their existing customers as well as new customers, where companies were trusted and liked, where doing business with a company was a good experience, where companies and their employees cared about their customers and each other?

What if we lived in a world where companies like that were the rule, instead of the exception? What kind of world would that be?

I believe that it is a world we can achieve, a world worth striving for.

To understand what it would take to create it, I believe we must first understand a little more about the world that we live in now.

We Live In a Changing World

While there may be great examples out there of companies and brands that treat all of their clients very well, I believe that the majority of companies are stuck in, what I like to call, “The Hole in My Bucket” Syndrome.

Do you remember the song?

There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole.

Then fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, Then fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it.

And so on…

In the song, Liza advises Henry that to fix his leaky bucket, he needs straw. To cut the straw, he needs an axe. To sharpen the axe, he needs a stone. To wet the stone, he needs water. However, when the song asks how to get the water, the answer is “in a bucket!” This implies that the only bucket available is Henry’s leaky bucket. Of course, if Henry’s leaky bucket could carry water in the first place, it wouldn’t need repairing! Consequently the song gets stuck in an infinite-loop.

When we think about this in the context of our businesses, is the solution really more “water” to replace the lost “water,” or to be more specific, more customers to replace lost customers? Should the focus not, in the first place, be on fixing the leaks before adding new water?

I believe that this is the first step to creating a sustainable business and platform for growth.

Fred Reichheld, in his book The Ultimate Question (2006), had it right when he talked about good and bad profits, and how the pursuit of good profits was the route to sustainable growth.

To quote Fred:

Too many companies are addicted to bad profits, profits that come at customers’ expense and drain the value out of customer relationships… Bad profits come from unfair or mis- leading pricing. Bad profits arise when companies save money by delivering a lousy customer experience. Bad profits are about extracting value from customers, not creating value… A company earns good profits when it so delights its customers that they willingly come back for more and not only that, they tell their friends and colleagues to do business with the company. The right goal for a company that wants to break an addiction to bad profits is to build relationships of such high quality that those relationships create promoters, generate good profits, and fuel growth.

Further, I believe that businesses that pursue bad profits do so by employing huge amounts of traditional marketing strategies, where the belief is he who shouts the loudest to the most people in the most places will get the most customers.

That may have been the winning strategy of the 20th Century, but not any more. In 2006 Chris Anderson, in his influential book The Long Tail, argued that technology was fundamentally changing the way companies do business and how they are viewed by their customers. To quote Chris:

We’re entering an era of radical change for marketers. Faith in advertising and the institutions that pay for it is waning, while faith in individuals is on the rise. Peers trust peers.

This is borne out by many surveys. An influential one from Edelman, a global PR firm, in 2009 and 2010 showed that trust in companies’ communications is going down and competition for our attention is going up. Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2010 (www.edelman.co.uk/trustbarometer)

All of these things present huge challenges to the way that we currently do business. It questions the way that companies find, engage and communicate with their marketplace, as well as calling into question the traditional methods for marketing and growing our businesses.

So, let’s look at the overall situation of our changing market place:

• The effectiveness of traditional marketing methods is going down.
• Trust in company and brand communications is going down.
• The voice of the customer is being amplified by the use of new technology, the internet and social media.
• Service levels seem to be going down, or is it that we are demanding more?
• Competition is ever increasing.
• Despite the data, companies are still largely customer acquisition focused due to an over-riding focus on short-term results and bonuses.

However, in the face of such compelling data and a changing marketplace, why are companies not changing their ways to ones that are dedicated to pursue sustainable growth or, what Reichheld called good profits?

I think there are a number of reasons:

1. Traditional marketing methods and their supporting departments are deeply embedded in our existing business modus operandi.
2. There are deep cultural, behavioural, management, leadership and knowledge barriers to change.
3. There is too much focus on short-term markets, results, announcements and bonuses rather than on longer term sustainable growth and customer relationships.

So what next?

While the challenges may look tall and the road long, I believe the objective is eminently achievable. It will take leadership, vision, teamwork and guts to overcome these challenges, but it is an objective that I believe we should strive for.

The ABC Building Blocks

That’s all very well and good, I hear you say. But, where do we start?

Well, let me tell you about a conversation I was having the other day where I was asked the same question.

I was talking to a roomful of business owners about growing their businesses through their customers and better service, and during the presentation we talked about the changing nature of doing business and the number of reasons why customers leave. According to my research, one of the main reasons that customers leave is not due to price and quality issues, but due to poor service or a perceived indifference on the part of the companies to them, i.e., their customers didn’t think they cared enough about doing business with them.

In order to manage this I suggested that businesses should pay more attention to their customers and build better relationships with them if they wanted them to stick around for longer. Simple stuff, right?

Then, someone spoke up and said that while they understood the reasons they should be building better relationships with their customers, they didn’t quite get how they could do it. Now, the how would have to depend on a number of factors, including their type of business, their customers, and the sort of relationship that they want to build. But I can say that I believe that if every business was to go back to basics, the ABC’s of building relationships both internally and externally, and operate under some simple basic principles, then I would wager they’d see a marked improvement in service levels and customer retention and loyalty.

Here are some very basic principles that we get taught growing up as children, ones that we often lose sight of when we grow up and enter the world of business.

Those principles are:

1. Be more courteous/polite towards each other. I think there is truth in the saying “manners maketh the man” and that we all like to treated with courtesy and politeness. Even in the age of the “Me generation,” this type of treatment still stands out. Also, it’d make your Mum proud.
2. Give everyone your respect. Whether someone is your customer, a potential customer, a teammate, superior or subordinate, giving someone your respect is one of the highest honors that you can give someone and it can bring out the best in them.
3. Do the things that you say you will do when you say you will do them. I think we all like reliability and trustworthiness. Even if that means saying you will call back and you can only do so with bad news, at least the person on the other end of the line knows where they stand. In the absence of information the mind can do funny things and can tend to make stuff up that’s worse than the bad news.
4. Be more punctual. This is quite a personal one, but one that I think deserves a mention, as time is one of our most precious resources and seems to be becoming more and more precious. So respecting someone’s time and making sure something happens when it is supposed to can speak volumes about how much you care about and respect the other person’s time.
5. Be honest. I believe that most people just want others to be straight with them. Trust us and tell us the truth. Most of the time we can handle it. Even if we can’t handle it or it upsets us, we’ll respect you for being honest with us.
6. Be open. Great ideas can come from anywhere and we do our customers, our people, and our- selves a great disservice by not building our businesses on this principle. This is probably one of the hardest principles to put into practice as it can go against many business and corporate control structures, but if you have the courage to pursue a set of relationships that are receptive to new ideas and arguments, it is a great way to build trust and drive creativity, innovation and productivity.

I would argue that each of these on their own cannot be argued against. Put together and implemented I think they become a powerful foundation for better relationships with our people and our customers.

This all sounds too simple, I hear you say.

Perhaps.

But as in life and nature, we know that sometimes the simplest solutions are often the best.

Is it easy to build this type of culture?

No, not always. It will depend on you as a leader, the business you are in, the relationships that you have with your team and with your customers.

Is it worth it? Definitely!

Just imagine if every business, or maybe just even the ones that care enough to make a difference, made a 1%, 5% or even a 10% improvement in the areas that I mentioned above. Then I believe that would put them head and shoulders above most of their competitors and, at the same time, create great places to work. Just think of the benefits for customer retention, customer loyalty, word of mouth marketing, referrals, employee retention and your ability to attract the right sort of talent for your business.

And, it may even change the world into a better place

Again, this was written as a manifesto across at Changethis.com earlier this year. You can download a full pdf copy of the manifesto here to share and spread the word.

Well, the other day I woke up and had the song ‘People should smile more‘ by Newton Faulkner.

Singing along to that song for most of the day got me to thinking about why we smile and the connection to smiling and how we build and develop relationships with our customers and employees.

I know that smiling is a way that we can express our inner emotions but looking into it I also found out that there is good evidence, learnt from when we are children, that smiling is also a way that we learn to engage people.

Think about how a smile can attract, motivate, soothe, transform, sell an idea and market your business more than a frown or a non-expressive face or voice….

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it is to start smiling more at your customers, your suppliers and your staff. You never know what might happen

On our last night, we got talking and he was telling me about his other business interests including a business called: Tony’s Tellies. This is a business that provides satellite and cable TV packages, installation and services to expat residents in the local area.

He is working with a very skilled and experienced technician and they pride themselves on providing ‘service with a smile’. Things are going pretty well but he said that he was struggling a little with his marketing and how to position the business with customers. He then asked me what I thought.

I said to him that often when communicating with customers the largest part of any buying decision is not logical but emotional. Therefore, I suggested that he should not just be selling satellite and cable TV as that is what most of his competitors would be doing. Rather, thinking about the demographic of his customers, expat residents in Spain, he should consider positioning his business as providing ‘a taste of home’.

The reason I suggested is that when we buy things it’s not always about the product or service but what we get from that product or service.

That’s not always as clear as it might seem but spending the time getting inside the mind of your customers will pay huge dividends for your marketing and help differentiate you from other ‘box-shifters’ or ‘product-pushers’.

Your excuse: This week is National Customer Service Week.

What does this mean?

Well, according to the Institute of Customer Service it is:

“a week long opportunity to raise awareness of customer service and the vital role it plays in successful business practice and the growth of the UK economy.”

They further explain that:

“The week gives employers an ideal opportunity to recognise the efforts and achievements of people working in customer service, particularly those involved in crucial frontline and customer-facing activities. It’s also a chance for organisations to show they genuinely care about customers.”

I think this is a worthy initiative but the fact that we have a National Customer Service Week means that the levels of service that are being delivered are not up to the standards that we would like to see.

Like in many relationships it’s easy to get caught up in the stuff of life, the day to day, the nitty gritty and to forget, neglect or take for granted the importance of the relationships that we have outside (and inside) our businesses.

So, here’s my question to you: Given that it is National Customer Service Week , which of your customers have you not spoken to in a while or who in your team have you not recognised in a while for doing a great job?

Perhaps, a phone call, a visit, a pat on the back or a thank you might be in order?

Go on. Give it a go. You never know what might happen.

What that means is that I’ll be sharing with you some simple and practical strategies that will help you engage new customers, keep existing customers for longer, deliver great service and to get them to help you spread the good word about you and your business.

What that doesn’t mean is that I’ll always advocate the use of extra or new technology (Sorry, Stefan).

It also doesn’t mean that I’ll write about creating more up-sell or cross-sell opportunities.

Well, that’s possibly wrong and it may happen. But, I don’t like the up-sell or cross-sell language. Why? Because those terms are focused on the interests of your business and not necessarily on the interests of your customers.

I believe that if we focus on the relationships that you have in your business and build and develop those then the opportunities to grow your business will come.

Let me give you an example of a customer that I worked with and the sort of simple and practical strategy I helped him implement that helped him grow his business by 50% over 18 months.

My customer was an IT services company that was providing IT hardware and support to schools, charities and local professional service firms. With little or no marketing, the firm had grown organically, through word of mouth recommendation, to a point that they had a team of eight people. Their existing customers kept them very busy but they found that their growth had stalled.

Looking at this more closely, we discovered that one of the issues that they faced was that they were always busy on customer projects. You might say that’s a good thing. And it is. However, what was also happening was that they were in danger of neglecting the relationships they had with their customers.

It’s like any relationship. I think we’ve all been there, at one time or another, where we get really busy with all of the stuff that we have going on in our lives that we sometimes forget how people around us feel and the relationships we have with them.

It’s not that their customers felt or were saying that they were neglected. It’s that they weren’t taking care of those relationships as well as they could.

Therefore, what we suggested was that the Managing Director started to call and email his customers or a regular basis. Not to sell them anything but just to enquire how they were and how things were going for them. In addition to this, we also suggested that he put aside Friday afternoons, as much as possible, to go round and see his customers.

What happened? Well, they gained a much better understanding of their customers businesses and lives, they built their relationships with their customers beyond being just about business which helped put them more ‘front of mind’ in a really positive way. The result: more projects, more referrals, better testimonials and 50% more business in 18 months.

Sometimes it’s the simplest things in life that can offer the best returns.

“

Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten!
~ Gucci Slogan

Expensive, for me, is a long term measurement. It does not stop with the buying process, it has to do with the number of re-installs, down time, ease of use and many more aspects of the product or service I have purchased. Take all that into account and Apple Macs are cheap!

What is more I’m not even interested in comparing products on that level anymore, for me the only question is which of the Apple Macs I’m going to upgrade to next.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had customers like that for your products or services?

Easy – just make sure your quality is up there and then you will find loyal customers. Combine that with great customer care and you have customers for life.

What is your Quality of Service like?

Other research suggests UK SMEs adopt key technologies like cloud computing much slower than their European counterparts.

In a time when we see the number of communication channels multiply – twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SMS, Email, telephone, chat, to name but a few – it seems the 24hr global economy is here to stay. This challenges small business more than medium size and larger business, resources for a 24hr business day are often too expensive for micro and small business.

WinWeb’s cloud based help-desk/service-desk application now solves this problem with the use of it’s global network of natively English speaking virtual assistants in the UK, US and Australia. Allowing every small business to be part of the global 24hr economy in a cost-efficient way and participate in it’s opportunities.

Like it or not – every business today is a global business!